


Two Roads Diverged

by Erisden, Hexiva



Category: Legion (TV)
Genre: AU where Switch's time travel works fine and has NO horrible side effects I guess, Alternate Universe, Angst, Bittersweet Ending, EDIT: Erisden has just informed me that this is not in fact a happy AU, Gen, Legion (FX) Season Three, Regret, Surrogate Father-Son Relationship, Time Travel, and that David probably left Switch to get eaten by demons prior to this story, so that's nice!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-04
Packaged: 2020-06-09 15:56:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19479187
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Erisden/pseuds/Erisden, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hexiva/pseuds/Hexiva
Summary: David goes back in time to protect his infant self from the malign influence of the Shadow King - and finds Farouk already there, waiting for him.





	Two Roads Diverged

The hospital nursery is dimly lit. It’s late evening, the sun setting outside the windows. The cribs are mostly empty - only a few children are here, being kept for observation overnight. 

One of them is crying. He is afraid of the dark, afraid of the monsters he believes lurk in it. He’s right, of course.

The monster steps out of the shadows and walks over to the edge of the crib, looking down at the child. It’s like looking in a mirror. He remembers being here, in this body, on this day. The first day. The day that he possessed David Haller. 

He reaches into the crib and picks up the child, making soothing noises. The child must be protected. That’s all that matters.

Then David is here. One moment, he’s not: the next, he slips through a door that bleeds golden light, a determined look in his eye as he searches the empty cribs for an infant from thirty-five years ago who is destined to lead a life riddled with terrors and tears.

And when he spots the monster, he stops, just for a moment: just long enough to determine the threat. His eyes narrow, and he weaves his way through the room, tense and ready to fight. “Get away from him,” he snaps, his voice low.

“I know what you plan to do,” Farouk says, his voice soft, so as not to frighten the child. “I’ve been waiting for you here.”

David stares down at the child, reaching out blindly until his fingers find the top of a crib panel to rest on. “Get away from him,” he says again, and his voice wavers, almost indiscernibly, with worry and fury.

“What will you do if I don’t?” Farouk asks, looking down at the child. “You will already have to fight one of me. I could stop you.” He shakes his head, and looks back up at David. And then, slowly, he holds the baby out, offering it to David. 

David looks perplexed and doesn’t move for a moment, still cautious. Gradually, he lets go of the crib and takes a step closer. “You’ve already done something to him,” he says. “To stop me from saving myself.”

“No,” Farouk says. “I’m not here to stop you.” He holds out the baby again. “I’m here to thank you. To say goodbye.”

Again, David stays still. Then, in one quick motion, he takes the baby, pulling him out of Farouk’s arms and wrapping him in his own. The baby stirs, but doesn’t wake. “Why would you want to thank me?” he asks quietly, his tone still accusatory.

Farouk studies David’s face, searching for something, and doesn’t find it. “You still don’t understand,” he says, shaking his head. “After everything, you still don’t understand.”

“I understand fine,” David snaps, his arms winding a little more around the baby. “I know what’s going on. Switch told me you found her. You know what I’m trying to do. So why would you come back and thank me for it?”

Farouk steps forward, close to David, and reaches out to brush one finger over the baby’s cheek. “You came here to save us. Both of us. To free us from each other.”

“I came here,” David says, his gaze on Farouk’s hand, “to save myself. Not to save  _ you.” _

“Is there a difference?” Farouk says. “We have been intertwined for so long. Trapped in each other, torturing each other. Suffering together.” He looks up at David. “You understand what it is like to be imprisoned for so long that you cease to want freedom, don’t you? For a long time, that was me.”

David studies Farouk’s face, considering those words. “When I do this,” he says slowly, “it’ll change everything. For me, it means I’ll have a better life, free of  _ you. _ For you, it means… it means you fail. It means none of this ever happens. Neither of us.” He sounds so confident and unapologetic. As though he’s already accepted the implications of wiping the past events - and himself.

“Tell me,” Farouk says, quietly. “Do you think I wanted this?” He gestures between him. “What we have become, both of us?”

“You tortured me for thirty-three years. You got your body back. Why would I think you  _ didn’t _ want this?” It hardly sounds like a question. “You chose it.”

“I chose wrong,” Farouk says. The statement hangs there in the air, flat and unqualified.

David is left frowning at him, cradling his infant self absently. He opens his mouth, pauses, then says, “Yeah, you did.” Another pause. “But - you still did it.”

“Yes. And we cannot undo what has been done - or can we?” Farouk tilts his head. 

“Not for us.” David looks down at the baby sleeping peacefully in his arms. “But I’m changing it for him.”

“Yes. For him.” Farouk’s voice is soft. “You have no idea what you’ve done to me, my dear.”

David presses his lips together. His frown is deeper now, and he looks up at Farouk, troubled. “What did I do? Let you live in my head all those years, let you feed on my power against my will?”

“You made me into the monster under your bed.” Farouk’s mouth twists, wryly. “Or perhaps I did it to myself. I tore away my humanity to fit into your skin. And then I was trapped there, like a man in a dark cell, forgetting who I was before, forgetting everything but you, until I loved you and hated you in equal quantities. Until I forgot what else there was to live for. I was a prisoner and you were my captor.” Farouk looks down at the child. “And now you are going to set me free.”

David looks at Farouk, and his gaze is contemplative. “I’m protecting him,” he says after a moment of thought, his voice even quieter now. “I’m not doing you a favor. I’m stopping you from being able to use him. Something else is going to happen to you.”

“Yes,” Farouk says. “Something else. Perhaps I will find another host, and repeat the cycle all over again.” His voice is tight. “Or perhaps I will die. I have no way of knowing.”

David adjusts the baby in his arms. His eyes are on Farouk, but there’s no way of knowing what he’s thinking in the moment. “And you’re thanking me.”

“I thought of stopping you,” Farouk says. He’s still not looking at David, his eyes back on the window, staring out over the Haifa skyline. “What you are planning to do - it frightens me. It’s a roll of the dice, a leap of faith - you will destroy us, and we must only hope that we will be reborn in a better life. Like suicide, in a way. Is that why you are doing this?”

“I’m doing it to change things.” David steps closer to him. “Just like I tried it before, even before I knew what I know now, about what I am. In the end, this was the way to do it. This is the only thing that’s left to do. Nothing else worked.” Now, it’s David’s turn to look away - down at the baby. “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but it’ll be better than this.”

Farouk smiles, slightly. “I have hope.” His eyes flick to the child, and back to David. He reaches out, slowly, and puts a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “The time is coming. You must act soon.”

David doesn’t pull away. He adjusts the baby in one arm, reaching up to cradle his head in one hand. It’s so small that it fits David’s hand snugly, like a glove. He runs his thumb across the baby’s forehead. “You’ll be safe now,” he murmurs, doing nothing but watching his infant self, as though he’s holding back, keeping this moment, untainted by powers and hauntings, just a little longer.

“Are you afraid, too?” Farouk asks, quietly.

David’s thumb stops its stroking. It moves down, the pad pressing against the baby’s temple. “I’m not afraid.” There’s a sad lilt to his voice. “I just… wish it had never happened in the first place. Then we wouldn’t have to do this.” He stops speaking, as though realizing just what he’d said. Then he nods - like calling them _ “we” _ in the moment was the right thing to say. “But we have to. To fix everything. Whatever it takes.”

With a sigh, he lowers his head, shutting his eyes. A cold, yellow glow lights the veins in the back of his hand and run down his fingers and into his palm. Beneath his hand, a small device materializes, ghostly and spectral and not quite there. It runs around the baby’s head, pulsing with faint light, then, after several moments, fading again.

Undisturbed, the baby only lets out a little squeak and turns his head, pressing his face against David’s arm.

“A halo,” he says softly, lifting his head. “To protect him from the monster. It should be strong enough to hold its own when we’re…”

“By then, it will have done its job.” Farouk takes a seat on a bench near the window, his eyes on the child. “Is there no part of you that regrets this? That wishes to still be -” He cuts himself off and looks away. He, clearly, still has his regrets.

“Together?” David asks, without skipping a beat. “In my head?” He moves to the crib the baby was originally in, slowly and carefully setting him down into it. His fingers come to rest again on the panel and he sets his chin on them, looking down at the child now sleeping peacefully again. “I wish for a lot of things. I  _ wished _ for a lot of things. Mostly, to be normal. You, in my head - that wasn’t normal.”

“You could never be normal,” Farouk says, and in his voice it sounds like a compliment, like he’s never thought it could be anything else. “You are more than that.”

“I’m a mutant.” David pushes off from the crib. He casts one more look down at the baby, then turns toward Farouk. “Omega. And it still wasn’t enough.”

  
Farouk is silent for a moment. And then he says, “No. It never was.”

David comes nearer. He stops next to the bench. “But it could have been different. If you hadn’t tortured me, it could have been different. So - why? Why’d you do it?”

Farouk is silent for a moment. “At first, it was revenge,” he says, eventually. “Your father killed me. I was furious. I felt - diminished. I had been a god, and suddenly, I was nothing but a ghost. I was like a paralyzed man, unable to affect anything outside of our body.” The words  _ our body  _ slip out of his mouth easily, as if that’s still how he thinks about it, as if he still sees David’s body as his own. “The only thing I still had power over was you.” A hint of menace sneaks into his voice. “And I  _ hated  _ you for it. You stood between me and control over my own life, my own body. And only when I broke you to pieces could I have my freedom again.”

“So that’s what you did. Broke me to pieces.” Very slowly, David steps around the arm of the bench and settles down on the other end. There’s a certain sense of forlorn finality, blanketing the room, of things yet to come. He watches the baby in the crib. “Did it ever occur to you to, I don’t know, ask me nicely?”

“No,” Farouk says, smiling slightly. The smile is more wry than smug, as if he’s laughing at a joke to which he is the punchline. “I have never believed in asking for things I felt I deserved.” He looks over at David. “Would it have been different if I had?”

David frowns. Drops his hands into his lap and leans forward, his elbows on the tops of his knees. “I don’t know. Maybe. If you hadn’t scared me.” He laughs softly, humorlessly. “Maybe it would’ve been easier for you.”

“I learned to love you,” Farouk says, quietly. “Because I had no other choice. You were me, and I was you. So I loved you, and I hated you, and when the time came to take control and walk away - I couldn’t. I was -” He stops, and looks away, and then looks back at the child. “I was afraid. Can you imagine that, my dear? Me,  _ le Roi des Umbres,  _ the Spider, the Devil with Yellow Eyes - I was afraid.” He laughs at himself, soft and bitter. 

“Afraid because you loved me?” Blinking, David looks at Farouk, lacing his fingers together in front of his knees. “It didn’t seem like that. Cary and Oliver, all of them - they had to force you out of my head. You didn’t seem afraid then.”

Farouk shakes his head. “That was part of it. I dug my claws into your flesh and I hung on for dear life. I convinced myself I had a right to you, to  _ own  _ you.” He laughs, again. “That was the egg, the delusion. I was afraid. I was afraid of having to put my life back together and face what I had become inside of you. You changed me, and I never believed such a thing was possible.”

David clicks his tongue. “I changed you?” He sits up and readjusts himself on the bench so that he can face Farouk, sitting on a calf, an arm resting on the back of the couch. “From what?”

It takes Farouk a long moment to answer, as if he’s psyching himself up, or searching for the words. “Did she ever tell you what I accused you of? Her, your beloved? That you were in love with your own power, that you could not see beyond her, that you saw her only as a plaything? Legion, the Worldkiller.” He shakes his head. “That was what I was. That was how I saw the world. And then I became trapped in your mind and I - was changed.  _ Transformé.” _

“Into what you are today?” David can’t help himself from glancing at Farouk’s clothes. His  _ nice _ suit, his  _ clean _ appearance. Nothing like the monster he imagines in his mind: the nightmarish Devil with the Yellow Eyes and its menacing grin. He wonders for a moment if Farouk really did look the same before his father had killed him as he does now. If he’s still the same person at all. “You helped Division Three. Helped them find me. Why?”

“You were changed too, were you not?” Farouk asks instead. “And not for the better. I made you into my shadow, my mirror. And in exchange, you - saved me.”

“I was helping people,” David replies, and even he thinks it’s too quick of an answer, too shallow. Shaking his head, he looks back at the infant. “I didn’t come here to save you. We’re both going to -” And then, he pauses.  _ We’re going to die. _ It doesn’t sound right. “We won’t be here for much longer. Either of us. That’s the exchange we made, what you’re talking about.”

“I know,” Farouk says. “And I am glad. It is an escape, in a way, isn’t it? Easier than facing what we have done, what we have become. And we will be together when the end comes. That is something - to me, at least.”

David opens his mouth to answer - another quick answer about how he doesn’t enjoy it, about how he’d rather have no company than Farouk’s. But he shuts it after a moment, turning his face away and shutting his eyes. It’s not funny, but he smiles anyways. Laughs dryly and shakes his head. “When I was a baby,” he says, “my parents gave me up. And you moved in. And now, everyone’s gone. Lost faith in me, given up on me. Just like them.” He opens his eyes, looking back at the crib and the sleeping baby inside of it. “And you’re still here.”

“Yes. Me.” Farouk smiles, as if he’s sharing the same joke. “The last one you would have wanted to stay.” He shakes his head again. “And yet I cannot give up on you,  _ joonam.  _ I left you with so little and you have come so far. How can I blame you for what I have caused you to do?”

David looks at Farouk. The words are confusing - not what he expected. “I thought you  _ were _ -” He shakes his head. “Did you know what I was coming to do?”

“Yes,” Farouk says. 

“And you decided, in all this - that I was, that I was coming to wiping everything out, to start over - you decided that you wouldn’t blame me? That you’d just… thank me?”

Farouk laughs, and looks away. “You taught me something, in all those years we were together.  _ Yekdelii. Empathy.  _ It hurts me, to see what I have done to you. And it hurts me, too, to see what I have become. Look at me.” For a sudden, terrible second, David almost sees the outline of the Devil with Yellow Eyes around Farouk’s shape. And then it’s gone, and Farouk is looking down, his face set in bitter lines. “This is not what I wanted. I was supposed to be more than this. I will not spend the rest of my life trailing after you, furious and besotted and losing my humanity.”

“You won’t be needing to do that for much longer.” Saying it out loud makes it feel all the more real. Maybe that’s what David needs, right now, in his last moments. Nothing’s felt real to him for a long time: but Farouk’s always been the constant. “And I won’t need to… find another way. Maybe it’s better this way. No more people getting hurt.” He thinks of Syd. “By the two of us.”

“Do you think it will be better, this other world you are creating?” Farouk asks. For a moment, David thinks Farouk is mocking him, mocking the impossibility of what he’s trying to do. Then he takes another look at Farouk’s face, and wonders if Farouk is instead looking to him for reassurance. For some hope that the world will be changed by the better for this - one way or another. 

And he softens. These are their last moments. “I don’t know,” he answers truthfully, looking down at his hands. “I don’t know what will happen.” He only knows the world with Farouk in it - with Farouk out of it, how it is supposed to go? “I hope it’ll be better. No Shadow King-tainted David out to ‘destroy the world.’ No monster, no Devil with the Yellow Eyes. You made my life hell for so long… it’ll all be different. But I don’t…” He frowns. “I talked with Syd. I told her how I could - with Switch, how I could go back in time and erase what I did, whenever she wanted. She told me it didn’t matter. That I’d still be the same person, I’d still be capable of those things, of doing those… I don’t know. I’ll be different, but I’ll… I’ll still be  _ me, _ somewhere. The part of me that wasn’t you, that wasn’t touched by you. I don’t know if that was the part of me that did that to her, that thought hurting her was - was okay.”

“And if the part of me that regrets what I’ve done was you - was your influence - then I will be a monster, too,” Farouk says, evenly. He reaches out, and puts his hand over David’s, and it covers it snugly. “We cannot know the future - not even with your friend’s help.”

“What do you think?” David asks. “Will it be better? Would it have been better like this? If you had never possessed me?”

“I would like to believe so.” Farouk shakes his head. “Reality is a choice, after all.”

“Right,” David murmurs, glancing away. “A choice. And we’re choosing our reality right now.” He nods. He gets it now. “Whatever happens - it’ll be good. It has to be.”

“You have your father’s optimism,” Farouk says, quietly.

In the crib, the child begins to cry.

In an instant, David is standing. He makes his way toward the crib, but the nearer he comes, the worse he feels - not in any physical sense, but mentally tired. It’s Farouk - the past Farouk, come to possess him. And suddenly, it feels real, more real than anything David has ever felt before: the emergency rooms, the psych wards, the noose in his living room. He feels regret, and panic, like he should do something, like he should take the halo off and let it happen, like this is the wrong thing to do after all.

Tense, he forces himself to move back, slipping behind another, empty crib and gripping the bars as he watches the infant cry, louder now, more desperate, completely terrified. It pierces through the room, a terrified wailing that has David closing his eyes and raising a hand to an ear.

And then there are arms around him, someone familiar holding him tightly, and a mind against his giving him strength. David catches his breath, because Farouk is hugging him, and he is at once the same terrible, sickening presence that is descending on the child, and a familiar companion here to protect him. 

The howling continues. David can feel the tears prickle painfully at his eyes, as though he, too, can feel this terrible entity possessing him, prodding at his mind. But he’s too strong for that.

When he looks at the crib, he can almost see a dark shadow around it, like dark tendrils creeping through the air around the baby, looking for a way in. At every prod, the baby screeches. He, too, seems to know what’s happening.

And then the shadow darkens, drifting around the baby’s head - a strengthened attack. The baby screams so loud it nearly shatters David’s eardrums, and he staggers back into Farouk’s arms, covering his ears and screwing his eyes shut.

The crying continues for a moment. Calms. And then it fades, until there’s only sputtering and hiccups to be heard. Then, nothing. David opens his eyes again.

The baby is asleep again.

Eyes moist, he lifts a hand to his throat. Farouk’s mind is still intertwined with his, arms wrapped around his body, and David can feel - warmth. Affection. Something like - 

“I love you, David,” Farouk says. It dawns on David that this time Farouk has called him by his name, not some patronizing nickname, not  _ my dear,  _ not  _ kiddo,  _ just  _ David.  _ “Believe me when I tell you, you didn’t deserve this. Any of this.”

“No.” It’s all David can say. “Not that baby. He didn’t deserve it, but…” He lets out a breath through his nose. He gets it now: Farouk’s unwillingness for any of this to happen and his corruption - just like he gets his own corruption. Maybe Farouk learned how to love, and he forgot. “Did we do the right thing?”

Farouk smiles, slightly. “I think I am the wrong person to ask,  _ joonam.  _ Right and wrong… I never did believe in them. But you tried. Perhaps that must count for something.” His arms tighten around David.

And then he lets go, catching David’s hands in his. He holds them up to the light.

Both of their hands have taken on a sketchy quality, like drawings half-finished - or half-erased.

_ “Es hat begonnen,” _ Farouk says.  _ It’s begun.  _

David lets out a breath and, again, feels a tinge of regret, a desire to take back what’s just happened, to call on Switch somehow to get them out of here. “It’ll be better this time,” he murmurs, for himself. No - for the both of them. “This time, it’ll be better.” He smiles halfheartedly at Farouk and nods. “Who knows. Maybe we’ll meet each other again. Wherever you go.”

Farouk smiles, slightly. “I would like to think so.” He pulls David close again, and kisses him on the forehead. “I’m proud of you,  _ joonam,”  _ he says, and his manner isn’t as leisurely as usual, as if he’s trying to get it out before he no longer can. “You have done your best. And you deserve - you deserve to be loved.”

In the face of impending annihilation, David can break. It doesn’t matter anymore what he does. So he does just that. He nods, shutting his eyes and pressing himself against Farouk and resting his cheek on Farouk’s shoulder. But they’re fading fast, and even Farouk’s body feels not quite solid, not quite there. “Thanks for being here. I don’t want to be alone.”

“Nor I,” Farouk says, letting his chin come to rest on David’s head. _“On se voit dans la prochaine vie, mon cher.”_ _See you in the next life, my dear._ Even his voice has a distant, echoey quality to it now. 

David sighs, and his breath comes out shaky, uneven, and weak. “See you later.” He can’t bring himself to laugh, so he wraps his arms around Farouk. “And… and I love you too.”

Farouk catches his breath, and opens his mouth to reply - 

And then they’re gone, and the hospital is silent, save the cries of children. 


End file.
